


i felt my world shake (out of control)

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: First Time, Flash Fiction - Thirty Minute Challenge, Flashbacks, M/M, Moment in time, Rad Storms, Reference to marriage of convenience, Second Hand Chem Use, references to trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:02:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: "Hey, darlin." Hancock's raw voice comes creeping out of the dark. Adam can barely see him, just the white pricks of his eyes. "You doin' ok?"
Relationships: John Hancock/Male Sole Survivor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	i felt my world shake (out of control)

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.

"Hey, Darlin." Hancock's raw voice comes creeping out of the dark. Adam can barely see him, just the white pricks of his eyes. "You doin' ok?"

The rain dribbles between the cracks of the Red Rocket station, cold air guzzling through the torn-up windows. He's no carpenter, but he's managed to knock up some half-decent protection, old rad soaked boards and bits of metal fencing still hardy after all these years. It's not enough. It's winter and freezing fog sticks to the dire plastic sheets. The air is damp with condensation. Adam shivers in his slacks. The Vault is nearby. He can always feel it, tumoring at the back of his brain. It's why he spends all his time on the roads. Preston can't understand it. Adam doesn't think he can explain it.

Nora is there, the almost sister in law, their shared son, meant for the lover she lost and the sister he saw vanish on the battlefield. _Marry me,_ he had said. _Marry me, because Vault-Tec won't let you in on a technicality. We'll look after each other, you and me. We'll raise the kid, have separate beds, do it as they did over a hundred years ago. Poppy would have wanted it that way._

_As my wife, you get a free place in the vault._

Hancock is still watching him, intent. 

"Yeah." Adam tries to smile. He pulls back his hair, feeling the feverish sweat of his temples.

"Heh." With a snigger, Hancock takes off his hat. His skin is marred, stretched across his scalp, twists of muscule and skin where fine, gold hair used to be. Without his hat and coat, he's so little but strongly wired, ribcage opening up against his scalded skin like butterfly wings. 

Adam's gaze scours his arms, the impoverished dip of his belly. 

Hancock keens in his throat, bemused. 

Adam turns quickly, tugging his own bloodied shirt over his head, hating the chill. Super mutants and feral mongrels have stalked them from Lexington. They stink.

"Could do with a shower," he mutters, exhaustion grinding on his vocal cords. There isn't much here, minus a water pump lazily fixed to a purifier, just enough to wash his hands and face and for Dogmeat to get the worst of the gristle out of his fur. 

That and a single mattress, barely wide enough for two.

"You have it," He cranks the pump for good measure. Sturges can get the water running flush hot against the generators, but all he manages is a shaky promise the latent rads won't burn his face off.

Hancock makes a short, non-committal noise. He's never been shy about his nudity and the shuck of his trousers raise all the hairs on Adam's neck, but he stubbornly washes, fixing an eye on the grumbling green sky.

Dogmeat herds the radroaches outside, snapping at their wings.

"Hey." Hancock's breath sidles against his neck, sweetened with chemical grape and dry thirst. "No need to be such a gentleman."

"No better for the Mayor," Adam gasps out, for Hancock's rough hand ghosts his shoulder. It's been so long, some would say, but for him, it's been never. Preston's dark eyes wink at him like stars from above the cracks of nuclear lightning, where the sky is clear, and Hancock presses into his broad back, lipless mouth against his neck.

"C'mon man," He whispers, and Adam recalls an extended hand, a snake smile and the flash of a blade a puncture in Finn's gut. "You know that ain't how I roll. Well, I would say it's big enough for us both, heh?"

There's a crack in the ending word, a brace for humiliation, a question between a joke and serious, and it snaps Adam back to earth.

He turns around slowly, feeling Hancock's arms slip from his shoulder, whether by surprise or hope, he doesn't know.

Adam towers above him, but that's no surprise, he towers above most people, but one look at Hancock is enough to make him feel small. There's a tearing smirk in the corner of Hancock's pocked mouth, bitter salt in his eyes, but it vanishes as Adam touches his face, slipping his thumb in the space between the malformed ear and gnawed cheek.

"Fuck," Hancock chokes. "Fuck."

Suddenly, all Adam can taste is acrid cherry and stale rads, Hancock's teeth and tongue and he doesn't fight. Like everything, he folds, gives in, sinks into Hancock as if its second nature, kissing where Hancock bites, bleeding where Hancock's shunted nails meet his skin, his back on the mattress and Hancock rearing up over him, taking a hit from a chem that smokes radium green toward the ruined ceiling.

The draw of it invades Adam's lungs, closing his throat before it opens it, opens him, pulls him from the filth of the floor and the decay of warped metal, to blinds of green lightning. He gasps, overwhelmed, for there are pricks in his skin where the needles meet, the sterile cool of scientists and Boston whole and uncorrupted through the scope of a military base. 

It bursts like stars as the sky roils in its tidal green, all fading to the shape of John, so close, his palm caught at Adam's cheek. With his forefinger and thumb, Hancock gently nudges open his lips, and he smoothly exhales the smoke between their shared breath.

Dogmeat whines from the next room, scratching at the shut door.

Adam closes his eyes.

The storm goes on.

_oh baby, it's just you_


End file.
